How to Improve Your Routing Techniques

With the routing process being one of the most time-consuming board layout tasks, designers need as many tools as possible for today’s complex design requirements. But with board layouts incorporating a broad support of component, signal and fabrication technologies in increasingly smaller enclosure sizes, how can we ever automate this time-consuming process?

Improved Design Efficiency

Routing software has evolved throughout the years, adding more functionality to make the process less laborious and inefficient. There are three features that illustrate the depth of functionality available to the modern electronics designer:

Dynamic Clearance Boundariesare a useful tool when routing through congested areas. The clearance boundary feature not only shows the available channels, but also puts a web in the spaces where the trace will not fit.

Pin Swapping while routing allows you to swap the pins as part of the routing task with the Subnet Swapping function. This can be more effective than swapping pins before routing because the optimal order isn’t necessarily the one with no connection crossovers.

Tune Accordions can be added while routing. As you move your cursor through that area, this tool will automatically fill the available area and precisely tune your traces.

Designers need as many tools as possible to meet today’s complex design requirements. With routing being a particularly labor-intensive aspect of the design process, these tools aim to improve the experience and increase efficiency.